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Daily Archives: September 17, 2013

* USA Today expects a 35 percent drop in newsstand sales when the price goes from a buck to $2 later this month. (gannettblog.blogspot.com)
* Reuters correspondent challenges editor’s order to pick up competitors’ scoops. (thebaron.info)
* Dallas Voice editor says he was fired for reporting on the pride parade public-erection ban. (dallasobserver.com)

Max Siepert , 11, meets the press.

* The best “press conference” I’ve watched today: An 11-year-old boy explains his $10.03 donation to a police department. (9-11 made him do it.) (fox6now.com)
* City officials ask Bristol Press editors to crack down on commenters. (bristolpress.com)
* Blogger considers suing New York Post for publishing her tweet in its Miss America racist backlash story. (observer.com)
* News consumers are dying to read well-written obituaries. (nuzedit.blogspot.com)
* Nancy Gibbs is named Time magazine managing editor. (wwd.com) | Gibbs explains what’s next for Time. (time.com)
* Indiana student who wrote about Aaron Swartz wins Chronicle of Higher Education’s journalism award. (chronicle.com)
* Fox News changes its primetime line-up. Greta Van Susteren is “to the moon thrilled” with her earlier shift. (mediabistro.com)
* An endorsement from Michael Wolff: “Medium is, actually, not all that bad.” (usatoday.com)
* Cox Media Group Ohio merges two of its daily newspapers. (bizjournals.com)
* “Suspicious men” who took a photo of a child were on assignment for the Centre Daily Times. (statecollege.com)

A journalism student asked Tampa Bay Times Pulitzer-winning writer Lane DeGregory (right): “Is there anything you wish you could tell yourself when you were as inexperienced as us?” Here’s one of her responses:

I wish I hadn’t thought I knew what the story was about before I reported it.
When I was starting out, my editor often told me what the story was about before I ever went out to report it — so I tried to tailor my questions and observations and even the writing to what I thought the editor wanted. But the story you set out to get isn’t always the story that’s really there, or the best way to tell it, or even a true reflection of whatever reality you’re trying to capture.

She also writes:
* I wish I hadn’t thought I had to be so smart.
* Instead of trying to stay out of the story, I wish I had shared myself more.
* I wish my early editors had given me more leeway to say, okay, here’s an idea, now go out there then come back and tell me what you think the story is.
* I wish I had read more short stories and fewer newspaper articles.

UPDATE: DeGregory tells Romenesko readers about her email to the journalism student:

I wrote that last week, after speaking to Jim Sheeler‘s class at Case Western University. One of his students, Maureen O’Reilly, asked me what I wish I had known when I was her age … I started to answer her email and an hour later realized I had coughed up a lot of regrets! I usually don’t write responses that long, but I always write back to students :) That just seemed like such a great question, one I had never thought of before!

Here is O’Reilly’s response to DeGregory:

Hi Lane,

Thank you so much for your response! I have always considered myself a risk-taker, but recently have come to some mental roadblocks. You know, the usual ones — I don’t have time, someone more experienced should ask the questions, nobody cares to read about that.

Your honesty has propelled me to the point of selfishness, that place where I have (or, at least fake) the courage to stand up, pitch a story and — gulp — cover one of my ideas in the coming weeks.

The advice you gave is wonderful, not just for journalism students, but, given my experience, for all young twenty-somethings in general. I actually printed out and taped your response over my desk. Hopefully, you don’t find that too weird.

Thank you again for your time and thoughtfulness!

I truly appreciate it.

Best,
Mo

MEANWHILE, IN EVANSTON…

The Class of 2017 is moving in today. What advice do you have for the incoming freshmen? Use #Medill2017 to let us know.

“I guess I’m not too familiar with the context of the game or the person who said that,” University of Nebraska-Lincoln student Ryan Prazynski told the Daily Nebraskan when asked about football coach Bo Pelini dropping the F-bomb in a recording leaked to Deadspin on Monday.

Daily Nebraskan editor Hailey Konnath tells Romenesko readers that most on campus are “very, very interested” in Nebraska football, but “when you have 25,000 students, you’re going to have some who go out of their way to avoid the football culture.”

I covered school board meetings when I was a Milwaukee Journal reporter, so I know what this education writer for a Florida daily is complaining about on Facebook. (The people she mentions are school board members.) I’m told that she deleted the post, but not before it was read by competing reporters.

* “Reporters are no better than their sources, and as sources, police scanners aren’t very reliable,” Paul Farhi writes in his piece on the Navy Yard shooting rampage coverage. (washingtonpost.com) | Breaking news badly. (washingtonpost.com) | (usatoday.com)
* Washington Post executive editor Marty Baron thanks staffers “who worked so fast, so hard, so tirelessly, so brilliantly, so long” on the Navy Yard story. (huffingtonpost.com)
* Mathew Ingram: “Breaking news is an error-prone event and likely always will be.” (gigaom.com)
* Some NPR listeners have a problem with Al Jazeera America’s sponsorship ads. (npr.org)
* Nebraska columnist blasts the “degenerate” tipster who gave Deadspin a tape of Cornhuskers coach Bo Pelini’s 2011 tirade. (journalstar.com) | (deadspin.com)
* Ex-Facebook managing editor Dan Fletcher and two associates launch Beacon, a site that lets readers directly support writers. (pandodaily.com)
* Twin Cities news anchor sues after learning that her driver’s license information was illegally snooped 1,380 times. (startribune.com)
* Ex-NBC page and Olbermann research assistant discusses her small role on “The Newsroom.” (dailyherald.com)
* Wherever aims to be “the go-to magazine for people who are doing some self-exploration or moving around,” says its creative director. “It’s a little bit of a travel guide, but not much of one.” (online.wsj.com)
* Former Time Out Chicago editor Frank Sennett joins RogerEbert.com. (rogerebert.com)
* Dallas Morning News’ new art critic will put in 20 hours a week and keep his university job. (niemanlab.org)
* “Sparkling prose” from recent editions of the New York Times: (nytimes.com)
* FYI: Testy Copy Editors website has relaunched. (testycopyeditors.com)
* MQM sends a $10 million libel notice to the New York Times. (dawn.com)
* George Takei’s AARP-produced YouTube show debuts today. (adweek.com)
* Pinch me! I can write four stories a day and make $28!? (journalismjobs.com)